


thinking of you

by kuraku



Category: SHINee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 20:22:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11721873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuraku/pseuds/kuraku
Summary: written for a friend. kibum has some trouble saying how he feels.





	thinking of you

Night came, as it always did, a subtle shift in the atmosphere. Another layer of exhaustion on his shoulders. The air was cold, and quiet, a steady hum behind his head, up the ceiling where the vents were, aching to flood the room with the chill of fabricated winter. Someone must have turned it up when he hadn't been paying attention. Or maybe he had been paying attention. It was hard to remember.

Kibum had never realized how much he took advantage of his free time until he started living with four other boys. It was one thing to have a family member in one ear, questioning things, wondering what was happening, asking about homework, but it was an entirely different thing to have a Kim Jonghyun whining that he hadn't been fed enough or a Lee Taemin wanting help with some English problems. It was as if no matter where he was or what he was trying to do, someone else would be there already, doing something else or needing him to do something else somewhere else. Kibum had watched some show once, where the couple living together ended up having to spend at least an hour apart once home just because it would be too much to deal with otherwise. He could readily sympathize. The constant noise and company was stifling on good days, unbearable on the rest. Sometimes he even thought if he put his hands over his ears and pretended no one else existed, it would work. (Not that he _actually_ thought it would, but he figured those thoughts were better than his more violent ones, where he considered how much he would enjoy beating Jonghyun with a pillow or throwing the remote at Minho next time the other complained.)

It was rare that Kibum got the sofa to himself; even rarer that he wasn't having to fight anyone for channel privileges. Being alone meant making his own decisions, meant not having to answer to anyone else, meant not having to pretend to be anyone else. Sometimes the days seemed just like levels in a video game where he never chose the right path or person to be. The more he surrounded himself, the more he was pushed behind the persona he chose, the attitudes he spat out.

The cushions sank almost uncomfortably beneath his weight. He fit into them just as awkwardly as he fit into everything else, loud and unyielding to the point where even if he didn't belong, he did in that one instant. All it took was a little shifting to get comfortable. He found that was true of most situations.

When his phone started buzzing, he figured it could only be one of the ten hundred people sorted by name and then relevance in his contact book. Kibum's eyes didn't draw away from the television just yet; he was still trying to puzzle out what he'd started watching in the first place. It was somewhat comforting to ignore the message temporarily once met with the knowledge of it. The thing about being alone was that he was never really truly alone, and that was okay. Perhaps it was hypocritical to long for something that, once realized, appealed to him only up until it was disturbed again. (Maybe he just needed to be around people despite not wanting to be. He wasn't going to admit that.)

_Kibum-ah!_ The message said, once his phone had been sandwiched between his fingers and his inbox pulled to the screen. Kibum's eyes hit the ceiling. It was his phone; obviously he would be the one to receive the text. It wasn't like he needed to be addressed firsthand.

_Kibum-ah, are you sleeping?_ came the next message, before he could even reply to the first. That annoyed him. He didn't like things to get backed up or out of order. The person sending the text already knew that. In fact, the person sending the text was probably grinning to himself at the thought, knowing that Kibum would be making one of those faces he liked. That annoyed him again.

'I'm not sleeping', Kibum wrote back. He thought that much should be obvious; then again, he wasn't in his room like he would be usually at this hour. The person sending the text probably noticed that, too. At least Kibum wanted to think his absence noticeable.

Jinki was one of the few people he didn't mind living with. Maybe it was because Jinki rarely did things simply for the sake of annoying him, or if he did, they were little things, tiny inconsistencies that would make Kibum grumble and scowl and in turn make Jinki grin and laugh. He thought Jinki had a reasonably nice smile, so it didn't seem all that bad to provoke it, even at his own expense. Jinki was also one of the few people who could cut the tension of a room in half simply by being there. Kibum couldn't count the number of times he'd had his temper leveled out by one of the other's jokes or silly statements.

So maybe that meant he tolerated Jinki more than most. Maybe that meant he enjoyed Jinki more than most. No, he would stick with the first one.

The message came back another minute or two later. Kibum wondered what Jinki was doing; he wondered if the other had been asleep. The rest of the dorm seemed dark and quiet and still, and it almost made him smile to think that perhaps they were the only two still conscious. The weight of expectation seemed lifted if it was only the two of them there. And it was ridiculous to be texting someone only a room away, wasn't it? But the corners of his mouth seemed to be rising without his agreement to let them do so, and his eyes were rolling even as his thumb pushed across the screen to draw up the message. Leave it to Jinki to ruin any kind of pensive mood he'd had about him.

When his eyes scanned across the words, Kibum had to read them again. Then another time, then another, before he could possibly comprehend them or try to fit them into the box of organized, neat feelings he had for the other boy. Not that he had _feelings_ , just...feelings. The part of his chest that warmed a little when Jinki would grin after making a horrible joke that Kibum made fun of, or the slight sheen to his palms when they'd hold hands to get into the van together. Normal feelings. Friendship feelings. Strange, occasionally awkward, mortified friendship feelings, but that was what they were. How they were classified in his head.

So when Jinki's text read, _I'm thinking of you_ , Kibum wondered if he should file it at all.

He wanted to fire back immediately, 'of course you're thinking of me'. After all, how could Jinki be texting him if he wasn't thinking of him? Then the thoughts went sideways. Derailed, slipped off the track, scattered and toppled into the dirt of confusion, where he wondered if he was supposed to be reading into the words, but why would he read into the words, and had he ever read into the words before, and why would it even matter if he did?

Then his train of thought rolled the other way, and he scoffed at the idea of overanalyzing a simple statement. Jinki was thinking of him. It was normal. Putting anything else behind the text would be superimposing his feelings on someone else and he wasn't the type to do that. Things weren't supposed to be so convoluted with him. Nothing good ever came from confusion; things had to be explicit.

Kibum ran over that thought again. Feelings? Whose feelings? His feelings? Those friendship feelings?

His thumb hesitated over the keyboard.

Jinki was the kind of person that other people wanted to be around. Even in his worst moments, there was something genuine there, unique, something that drew affection to him like moths to a flame. More than once, Kibum had wondered if the only reason people were drawn to himself was because of his sheer insistence to have them there.

_Did you fall asleep?_ , came the vibration another half a minute later.

_You're not in here_ , Jinki noted after another minute.

'Living room', Kibum answered back absently, before opening the other text again to stare at it.

Jinki said something back to him, but he didn't read the text as it flashed on his status bar before dropping away again.

_I'm thinking of you too_. Five words. It would be so easy to type them.

But Kibum didn't type them. His knees drew up to his chest, elbows pinned atop them, and his hands folded over the curve of his ears, the faint sound of the television suddenly muffled and eerily silent. Maybe if he kept his hands there, the feelings would just go away.

Not that he _actually_ thought they would, but he figured those thoughts were better than his more disturbing ones, where he considered how much he would enjoy it if Jinki had actually meant what he said, even just a little bit.

**Author's Note:**

> ( originally written: 2012.06.14 )


End file.
